ST. LOUIS — In the first postseason match in franchise history, St. Louis CITY SC lost to Sporting Kansas City 1-4.
Fans turned up on the cold and wet night. The match took place at 9:25 p.m. Sunday at CITY's home stadium, CITYPARK and ended around 11:15 p.m.
Despite being the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, the team allowed four goals in a surprisingly harsh loss. The referees were busy with multiple yellow cards.
Kansas City’s Logan Ndenbe, a 23-year-old defender, opened the scoring in the 27th minute when he put away a shot from the top corner, but Tim Parker answered when he cleaned up a corner kick from Indiana Vassilev that was deflected by the Sporting defense to make it 1-1 moments later.
Rémi Walter scored in the 36th minute to give Sporting KC the lead for good and Gadi Kinda added a goal in the 39th to make it 3-1. Walter scored when Kinda's shot from the left side of the box was kick-saved by goalkeeper Roman Bürki but the ball rolled directly to Walter at the top of the box and he threaded a roller through four defenders and past Bürki into the net.
Kinda's corner kick was headed by Alan Pulido at the near post to Dániel Sallói, who tapped in from point-blank range to cap the scoring in the 61st minute.
St. Louis, which has lost three games in a row for the first time this season, is the eighth expansion team to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season and the first since Inter Miami and Nashville accomplished the feat in 2020.
St. Louis will now head to Kansas City for Match 2 at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5 at Children's Mercy Park. CITY SC lost 2-1 during the regular season at Sporting's home stadium.
Game 3, if necessary, will be back at CITYPARK on Saturday, Nov. 11.
A tifo featured a brick wall background with the words, "Wall of Sound" and "STL" in a yellow heart.
The matchup
CITY SC won both matches at CITYPARK by scoring four goals in each, becoming the first team to score four goals on multiple occasions in a single season against Kansas City since 1999.
St. Louis CITY SC won the Western Conference title and will be the No. 1 seed. The team finished its historic inaugural season with a record of 17-12-5, 56 points overall. They tied the record for second-most points by an expansion team in league history, just missing out on the record set by Los Angeles FC with 57 in 2018.
Sporting Kansas City began its season with a 10-game winless streak before turning it around and qualifying as the No. 8 seed. The team finished the season with a 12-14-8 record overall.
KC beat San Jose 4-2 in penalty kicks to win the Western Conference Wild Card match, advancing to face CITY SC.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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